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Women Versus Men as Managers - Are they different?

In terms of motivating and leading the workforce of today, who is best for the
job? Men or women?

There has been a sort of conventional wisdom about male and female managers.
Each supposedly has certain strengths and weaknesses. According to this line
of thinking, women tend to be good at such things as communicating, making
employees feel empowered and handing out positive feedback. Men are thought
to be more decisive, are better at planning and have greater technical skills.

But those stereotypes didn't satisfy my curiosity, or that of my clients.
After fifteen years of wondering, I decided to test the conventional wisdom.

For five years data was collected on 2,482 managers (1727 males, 755 females)
from 459 organizations across nineteen states. It included managers at all
levels. Using a method known as a 360-degree feedback, the data included each
manager's self evaluation with evaluations from his or her boss and direct
reports. The study attempted to measure each manager's ability in 20 different
skill areas: setting goals, planning, technical expertise, coaching,
evaluating performance, facilitating change, standards, recognition,
delegation, approachability, participation, strategy, empowering, trust,
self-confidence, communication, teamwork, resourcefulness and decisiveness.

The results were surprising. Female managers--as rated by their bosses,
themselves and the people who work for them--are indeed better than their male
counterparts at the "softer" skills such as communication, teamwork, feedback
and empowerment. But they're also more decisive, better at goal setting,
planning and facilitating change.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that women rated higher no matter who was
doing the evaluating: bosses, employees or the managers themselves. Employees
rated female managers higher than male managers in seventeen of the twenty
skill areas, fifteen at a statistically significant level. Men and women tied
in the other three areas (technical expertise, delegation, self-confidence).
Bosses rated female managers higher than male managers in sixteen of the
twenty skill areas, all sixteen at a statistically significant level. Bosses
rated men higher on one area (Directive). And contrary to the accepted notion
of women as terminally self deprecating, when managers did the self-rating,
women gave themselves higher scores in fourteen skill areas, all fourteen at a
statistically significant level. Men and women were tied on the other six
areas.

Some of the biggest gaps appeared in the employee evaluations. For example,
the largest differences came in planning, coaching, recognition,
resourcefulness, and setting standards.

There's an irony here. One could theorize that women are more adept at the
softer skills primarily as a result of their early socialization, which
prepares them to be more concerned about communication and cooperation. Boys,
meanwhile, may be taught to be more aggressive and focused on individual
accomplishment. From the research, it appears that women have acquired
nontraditional "male" strengths in recent years, but that men have not
broadened their "soft" skills in the same way.

This is unfortunate, because the contemporary workplace increasingly needs
more supportive, collaborative ways of accomplishing things. Women may be
better prepared to lead in such ways as facilitating group processes,
motivating employees and keeping focused on outcomes and goals. Men, it
appears, still rely on a more autocratic style, emphasizing individual
accomplishment and competition. Could it be that women, in general, combine
those multiple skills more effectively?

If these results are accurate, they raise a question: If bosses think so
highly of their female managers, how come they're not promoting them faster?
Now that's a topic for another time.